


Coming of Age

by toushindai (WallofIllusion)



Category: Baccano!
Genre: Abuse, BAD FEELS IN THIS ONE MY FRIENDS, Gaslighting, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, and a shitton of very subtle headcanon, vague pedophilia vibes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-09 22:42:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8915971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WallofIllusion/pseuds/toushindai
Summary: Czes's twentieth birthday.





	

**Author's Note:**

> You'll wanna check the tags on this one for warnings if you haven't already.

— _Shunk_.

A noise startled Czes out of a fitful dream. He sat up in bed, trying to figure out what had woken him; then the sound came again and he flinched.

— _Shunk_.

It sounded like it was coming from the kitchen. There was no reason, Czes thought, for a sound like that to put him on edge or make him tremble like this. It was just a _noise_. Tomorrow was his twentieth birthday, and even if he still _looked_ like he was ten years old, he should have been more mature than to jump at strange sounds and imagined phantoms. Fermet and Begg told him it was okay to be worried about Szilard even as they reassured him that they’d keep him safe—but it wasn’t like that sound was the sound of Szilard coming to destroy their family. It sounded like someone chopping meat in the kitchen. Maybe Fermet was making a surprise meal for his birthday. That would make perfect sense.

— _Shunk_.

Czes jumped when the sound rang out again, and then gritted his teeth. The clock by the door showed that it was past midnight. He was twenty years old now. He wasn’t going to just sit here like a frightened child; he was going to go see what it was, like an adult.

He padded down the hall towards the kitchen, where he could see that a lantern was burning. Entering the room, he found Fermet turned towards the table, a meat cleaver held aloft in his right hand. Fermet hadn’t noticed him yet, but when he brought the cleaver down with another _shunk_ , it didn’t scare Czes this time. In fact, Czes breathed a sigh of relief. Everything was normal here.

“Fermet,” he called out, thinking of how happy it would make Fermet to be the first one to congratulate him for turning twenty.

And indeed, there was a smile on Fermet’s face when he turned, as full of love as it ever was. “Happy birthday, Czeslaw.”

But as Czes opened his mouth to say _thank you_ , he hesitated. There was something strange about Fermet’s smile, something _off_. The way the light caught his face made him look like a different person. Confused, Czes glanced away—and his eyes fell on the cleaver that Fermet was still holding. But that only made his heart leap up into his throat because there was blood, _human blood_ splattered across it, and as he watched the blood began to wriggle and pull itself off the glinting silver blade and fly towards—Czes followed it with his eyes, he couldn’t look away—the fingers of Fermet’s left hand, which were just beginning to reattach themselves.

Fermet simply wiggled his fingers as the wounds closed, completely unconcerned. Czes caught his breath in a whimper, all the fear that had woken him up suddenly spinning in his head again.

“Fermet…?”

“Don’t worry, Czes,” Fermet said with a gentle smile. “I’m fine. I’m just testing something about our immortality. Did I wake you?”

“Y-yeah…”

“I’m sorry. And to trouble you on your birthday! You’re a big boy now, aren’t you, Czes? Twenty years old.”

“Uh-huh.”

A flicker of memory: Fermet had said the same thing on Czes’s tenth birthday, calling him a big boy with love and pride. Was twenty not worth a different phrase? Maybe it wasn’t, when Czes would never age physically. He felt suddenly queasy, as if there were something wrong with what Fermet had said. But Fermet would never hurt him.

As if to confirm what Czes was so sure of, Fermet put down the cleaver on the table and dropped to one knee, opening his arms for a hug. “Come here, Czes.”

Czes stepped forward shyly and wrapped his arms around Fermet’s shoulders. He took a deep breath, inhaling Fermet’s familiar scent, feeling Fermet’s familiar shape between his arms. Everything was fine. Everything was okay. It had scared him to see Fermet hurt, but the damage wasn’t lasting, because of what they were.

“I’m sorry, Czes,” Fermet murmured in his soft-spoken way. He stroked Czes’s hair. “It was just a little experiment. I shouldn’t have let you see. I was just so curious about what our bodies are like.”

“Uh-huh. It’s okay, Fermet.” He hugged Fermet a little tighter, hoping he wouldn’t say any more. He just wanted it to be behind him. Part of him wished that Fermet would just carry him back to bed and tuck him in so that he could go back to sleep and pretend what he’d just seen was a dream. Maybe it was. Maybe this was just a nightmare.

“Yes… it was just an experiment,” Fermet murmured again. He stood, taking Czes’s hands and smiling down at him. It—it was his normal smile. Wasn’t it? Peaceful and kind and loving but for some reason it made Czes’s head spin with a sudden fear and when he tried to pull away, Fermet’s grip on his right hand was too _tight_ , too tight to escape; he forced Czes’s forearm down against the table and raised the cleaver high once more.

“This is all just an experiment, Czes!”

— _Shunk_.

Czes _screamed_.

His right hand was gone. It was on the wrong side of the cleaver’s blade. At first the shock and the sheer _wrongness_ of what had just happened were greater than the pain; but then they weren’t anymore and Czes felt pain blaze in every pore of his body, in every nerve, crowding all other thoughts out of his brain. He screamed again, screamed continuously, his eyes filling with tears and his body desperately trying to fight free of Fermet’s grasp. He wasn’t anywhere near strong enough, he was trapped and powerless—between his screams he heard Fermet mutter _Incredible… it’s so much faster_ —he could see the blood trickling back towards his arm, creeping over the impenetrable steel wall of the cleaver to come back to him, but his hand was _still trapped on the wrong side_. Somehow he twisted his left arm out of Fermet’s control and made a desperate grab for the hand— _his_ hand—he grasped it and pressed it to his wrist and it came back to him, the pain of the wound replaced all at once with the squeezy stinging pressure of how tightly he was gripping it in his left hand.

Fermet released him and staggered backwards, his hand over his face, a sound pouring out of him. Laughter. He was laughing but Czes had never heard him laugh like this before, free and unrestrained and absolute. For a moment, Czes stood paralyzed, his mind still trying to grasp the incomprehensible. Then his instincts kicked in. He turned and ran.

Begg’s door was closed but he burst into the room anyway, sobs trapped in his throat.

“Begg, Begg, something’s _wrong_ —”

“Czes? What is—it?”

Begg sat up, clutching his head. He was high, or coming down from something. And usually Fermet said to give him space when he was like this but Czes needed someone _now_. He threw himself into Begg’s arms, his small body shaking with tears.

“What’s—going on? Czes? Are—you okay?”

“Something’s wrong with Fermet, he’s not—he can’t be—he—”

He couldn’t get the words out. Every time he remembered the cleaver, the pain, Fermet’s _laughter_ , his mind refused to work and his limbs shook like he was possessed.

“It’s—okay. Just calm—down—Czes.” Begg held him, rubbing his back. But then: “Fermet? Do you—know what this—is about?”

Czes froze, his throat suddenly closing. He felt like Fermet’s eyes—even hidden by his hair as they had to be—were burning into his back.

But when Fermet spoke, his voice was calm, devoid of both Czes’s panic and his own raucous laughter.

“It’s my fault,” he said. “Czes was sleepwalking, and he must have been having a nightmare. I wasn’t careful when I woke him, and I think I scared him.”

…What?

Czes caught his breath. Was… that what had happened? It wasn’t what he remembered, but it made sense, made _so much more sense_ than the horrible events recorded in his memory—

He felt a gentle touch on his shoulder and yelped, burying himself deeper into Begg’s arms.

“Czes, it’s okay.”

Czes trembled. It wasn’t okay. But maybe it was, maybe it could be—

“Czes, look at me,” Fermet’s voice said. It was calm and coaxing. Czes took a deep breath and pulled his face away from Begg’s chest, turned towards Fermet. Fermet was smiling. It was the same smile he’d worn when he pinned Czes’s arm to the table but it was also the same, the very same smile he _always_ wore. Czes didn’t know what to think.

Fermet reached out with his left and ruffled Czes’s hair.

“You trust me, Czes. You know I’d never hurt you. Isn’t that right?”

It _was_ right, wasn’t it? Didn’t it have to be? It was the only thing that made sense. It was the only thing he could bear to believe.

“Believe—me, Czes,” Begg agreed gruffly. “Fermet couldn’t—hurt—a fly. Whatever—you think—happened—was just—a bad dream.”

Yes. Czes nodded nervously, and then with more strength. They had to be right, both of them. He’d just had a bad dream. The terror, the laughter, the pain in his wrist that he could still remember, all just a dream.

The way that Fermet gripped his hand just a little too tightly as he led Czes back to bed—

All of it was just a bad dream that he’d forget by morning.


End file.
